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"We do not have many intellectuals who can speak out for us internationally. We have no writers who are recognized, respected and loved outside the Arab world."
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"Never believe all that you hear. Always verify the original source of information."

"But let no one imagine that we were mere ascetics. There is no more complex pleasure than thought, and it was to thought that we delivered ourselves over."

"Nothing will be impossible for the one who reads."

"Like many intellectuals, he was incapable of saying a simple thing in a simple way."

"No one knows a man better than himself."

"Only those who know the supremacy of the intellectual life-the life which has a seed of ennobling thought and purpose within it-can understand the grief of one who falls from that serene activity into the absorbing soul-wasting struggle with worldly annoyances."

"It is better to have a fair intellect that is well used than a powerful one that is idle."

"It is an unscrupulous intellect that does not pay to antiquity its due reverence."

"Obstinacy is the result of the will forcing itself into the place of the intellect."

"Intellectuals would be much more accepted now than in the '40s."
Explore more quotes by Tahar Ben Jelloun


"An individual voice can be heard in a choir that otherwise sings in unison. This is something that is not excused."


"I write about wounds, the eternal treasons of life. It's not very funny, but it's sincere. My commitment is to sincerity."


"The power of the word in Morocco belonged to men and to the authorities. No one asked the point of view of poor people or women."


"I came to poetry through the urgent need to denounce injustice, exploitation, humiliation. I know that's not enough to change the world. But to remain silent would have been a kind of intolerable complicity."


"It is through accepting other people in our own countries that we shall come to respect our neighbours and be respected in our turn."


"I am a guest of the French language. My poems in French are born of my interaction with the French language, which is not the same as that of a French poet."


"To lead a country, you must periodically hold a national consultation in which people representing different programmes can make a bid for power."
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